


bellows

by NekoAisu



Series: long & lost [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Gen, Named Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Ocean, Original Character(s), Sailing, Sea Shanties, Singing, The Maelstrom (Final Fantasy XIV), Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-30 20:22:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17835542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NekoAisu/pseuds/NekoAisu
Summary: “If I hadn’t ears, I’d say you have skill.”Of all the possible causes of death available to the Warrior of Light, cracking his bones like glow sticks on a Maelstrom-issue frigate’s deck was not high up on his list of Choice Ways To Go. He’s still moderately red-faced from hanging like some sort of wannabe bat from the rigging when he mutters, “Not like I asked y’to listen.”(Or: Fahmi is an ocean-born through and through but never acts as such)





	bellows

**Author's Note:**

> i know what i want and still find some way to fail at making it. take these seafaring kiddos singing some Damn Good Shanties 
> 
> credit to the resplendent Pe-achTea for letting me borrow their OCs! Meldica, Isa, and Myma are all theirs <3  
> check them out here on tumblr: http://pe-achtee.tumblr.com/

 

“If I hadn’t ears, I’d say you have skill.”

Fahmi groans, hanging off the rigging with his thighs hooked over the half-fulm thick rope. “W’d it kill you to be patient with me?”

Meldica stares down at him from the crow’s nest like he’s grown another tail or two before replying, “No, but I’ve no intention to regardless.”

“Ah.” There’s a long silence where the (godsdamned idiot) Miqo’te wriggles his way back to being upright and not at all in very possible peril of cracking his bones like glow sticks on the Maelstrom-issue frigate’s deck where it sways a good hundred or so yalms below. He’s still moderately red-faced from hanging like some sort of wannabe bat when he mutters, “Not like I asked y’to listen.”

“I heard that,” the bard shot back. “You can carry a tune worth a damn, sure, but what the hell’s that  _ volume? _  If I didn’t know you to be a tomcat I’d peg you as a mouse.” She adjusts her hat, feathers long since gone gritty with seasalt, and grins like she’s about to murder some poor, unsuspecting soul with her flute (again).

Fahmi’s tail fluffs, a shiver zipping from tip to toe at the predatory look, and he instinctively backs away and off his safe perch into the terrifyingly empty air of a gap in the heavy rigging. There’s barely half a second where he feels absolute and all-encompassing regret before the years of pulling off barely survivable operations kicks his magic into high gear and envelopes him in a shimmering, pearlescent barrier, layers of shielding springing to life as if the desperate act of turning himself into a magical bouncy ball will save him from taking an unmistakably fatal drop down onto sea-worn wood. It does, but only barely, and in the sort of way that reminds Fahmi of the time Thancred had said,  _ “And there you have it. Our friend is too stubborn to die.” _

He clings to that damned stubbornness long enough to yank further white magic into being just until the inferno that is his ribcage stops being Like That and feels vaguely like bones again. He sits up and  _ nope okay n o bones don’t shift like that ouch. _

“What have I said about bleedn’ll over my deck, Nikephoros?” The man in question gives half a wheeze in both response and greeting when the captain drops down beside him. The Raen laughs, the sound carrying easily where it booms from his chest, and pats him none too gently on the shoulder. “You don’t have the medicus’s quarters for nothin’. Get patched up and make yourself useful. We dock by noon.”

Fahmi pushes pulse after pulse of searing energy through his system until he can breathe like a human being and not some Allagan chimera’s long-lost cousin. “Got’cha, Cap’n Masa.”

The captain stands from where he’d been crouching next to his (baffling, ridiculous) charge and walks toward the stern. If they’re to dock in less than a handful of hours, there will be an  ever-growing task list of things to complete by the time they’ve pulled safely into Limsa Lominsa’s main port. He shakes his head and bellows, “All hands!”

There’s an answering chorus of  _ “Yes, Captain!”  _ ad Fahmi is on his feet like his life very nearly depends on it. All his joints click and shift unnaturally, but he can’t nearly feel it when scrabbling up and back to his previous perch before continuing past the crow’s nest to the highest point on the mainmast. Meldica stares after him, eyes narrowed like he’s some sort of idiot-shaped puzzle she’s not sure how to solve when the captain starts up an unfamiliar shanty that has the entirety of the regular (non-adventurer) crew shouting along. 

Fahmi is… uncharacteristically loud in his accompaniment. 

“I  _ knew  _ you had it in you,” she hollers at him, scaling the rigging before whipping out her flute like it’s a weapon. Truly, for all intents and purposes, it is. She’s a godsdamned  _ bard  _ and giving a bard any sort of sound-making object is a recipe for disaster and/or unmitigated chaos by principle of it being their craft-of-choice. 

Fahmi sluts his mouth with an audible click and very pointedly does not make so much as a  _ peep.  _

“Oh, come  _ on!  _ You were just belting it out and now you’ve decided to make like Isamu whenever anyone asks him how old he is,” she laments. “You need to do that around people of you’ll never get us─”

“Don’need to,” Fahmi interjects. “No need. Temp job.”

Meldica nails him with a truly unimpressed look before turning herself from head to stern to call, “We need  _ hype,  _ Cap’n!”

It’s a ridiculous thing to yell at any of the crew (much less Masa and his accompanying position onboard the  _ Undine _ ), but when the initial song comes to the close he replies with an unsurprisingly spirited shout of,  _ “What do we do with a drunken sailor?” _

It’s not what they’re  _ supposed  _ to be singing, considering that they’re to pull into port and not float any of their number out in punishment for not holding their drink as well as they should, but here they are with Fahmi appearing horribly betrayed as everyone else pitches in on the work and the song in equal measure. Meldica smiles at him again and it’s a threat above all else. 

“Y’re the  _ worst,”  _ he grits out, tail lashing, and buries his face in his hands. “Not gonna around you.”

“So it’s fine around, say, Masa?”

He growls, wind whipping unnaturally strong where it catches at the edges of his agitation and sparks with magic. “No.”

“Isa?”

“...”

“Myma? Melianthus? That one lookalike from the pub whose name I forgot?”

“That’s my literal brother─”

“So him, then,” Meldica decides. “But he isn’t here and you’re stuck with me! Sing!”

Fahmi blinks slowly. “No.”

“Please?”

“Nope.”

“I’ll stop making fun of your dumb─”

“Fine!”

The bard hoots, holding out a hand. “Shake on it.”

“Y’re a terror,” he replies. 

“Yes, yes, I know,” she sighs. “Now,  _ sing.” _

Fahmi makes a very directed effort to be as quiet as possible before Meldica’s elbow makes contact with a still-smarting rib. “When y’get yourself trampled by some monster or another, I will heal you to death just for that.”

“That makes exactly zero sense and will not stop me from turning you over to the nearest Songbird we cross paths with at harbor,” she points out. “Sing, scream, keep making those pathetic wheezing sounds─I don’t care so long as it’s noise and it’s  _ loud.”  _ She matches the verse just as Masa leads them into the chorus, watching the patterns of the sailors on deck moving from post to post and then back again. 

Fahmi makes the barest hint of a peep before the threat of another impromptu session of elbow-meet-ribs became paramount. It’s like some figurative dam has been released the moment he opens his mouth. The chant ringing along the  _ Undine  _ is contagious where it snags at his self control and dashes any level of volume management he attempts to employ. 

By the time they pull into port, he’s nearly voiceless and deaf with abandon. Meldica drops him at the nearest (and only) Adventurer’s Guild like a hot popoto and dips with one last remark of, “Watch your volume now, Fahmi. Inside voice’n all that.”

“‘Nd you your wit.”

“Ah, yes, of course,” she jokes, “my terrible, god-slaying wit only. Not my flute, or anything  _ actually  _ murder-worthy. Be safe, my friend.”

He nods in her direction before promising, “Yes, sure, maybe. You as well.”

(Not even a week later finds him on yet another round of Saving Worlds And Taking Names with all the grace and demure commentary of someone resigned to their lot in life up until the point he shatters his elbow and his ramshackle party is reminded of his rank within the Maelstrom when he cusses loudly and more colorfully than any regular Lominsan fisher. Meldica hears about it, of course, because Melianthus can’t keep her mouth shut and rings him via linkpearl.

_ “I said ‘inside voice.’”) _

**Author's Note:**

> pls feedback me. i need that Good Validation 
> 
> hmu on:  
> twitter | FlamingAceKiri  
> discord | NekoAisu#7099


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